MOPITT: Daily Gridded Carbon Monoxide from Satellite Thermal IR

MOP03T_9 provides daily mean-gridded carbon monoxide (CO) profiles and total column retrievals from the MOPITT instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite. The data, derived from thermal infrared radiances, includes gridded averaging kernels for each retrieval. Collection began after the instrument's launch on December 18, 1999, and is ongoing.

Use Cases

• Tracking global CO pollution sources and transport based on daily gridded total column retrievals.
• Validating atmospheric chemistry models using the provided gridded averaging kernels.
• Studying long-term trends in tropospheric carbon monoxide from the ongoing time series.
• Assessing regional air quality and pollution events with daily mean data.

Strengths

• Provides a long-term, consistent record from a satellite launched on December 18, 1999, with data collection ongoing.
• Includes gridded averaging kernels for each retrieval, which are essential for proper data interpretation and model comparison.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, file size, and specific column names are not provided on any platform.
• The license is ambiguously listed as 'other-license-specified' without further detail.
• Platforms show conflicting 'last updated' dates (2026-04-09 vs 2025-02-01), creating uncertainty about metadata freshness.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); instrument funded by the Canadian Space Agency.

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing via the MOPITT instrument's thermal infrared channels aboard the Terra spacecraft.

Time Range

From December 18, 1999, onward (ongoing).

Freshness

Platform metadata was last updated between 2025-02-01 and 2026-04-09.

Geography

Global coverage from a sun-synchronous polar orbit.